


A Crown of Maple Leaves

by DarkBlue



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Drarry adjacent, F/F, Friends to Lovers, Friendship/Love, Post BOH, Prompt Fic, Tumblr Prompt, linny - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-09
Updated: 2018-08-09
Packaged: 2019-06-24 13:33:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,987
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15631701
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DarkBlue/pseuds/DarkBlue
Summary: Ginny looked suspiciously at the table. “Wait…was this…a date?”“Of course,” said Luna imperturbably. “They always were.”“They what?” Ginny yelped.“Every time we came, I thought it was a date. You moved in with me! We live together.”“We’re dating?” Ginny yelled.





	A Crown of Maple Leaves

**Author's Note:**

> on tumblr, lilyaceofdiamonds prompted with: "Linny first Hogsmeade date" and I just ran with it :)

October 31, 1999

“It feels strange to be in Hogsmeade,” Ginny commented as she looked around. She and Luna were walking down the cobbled streets, surrounded by chattering students in uniform, even though the two of them were not. Ginny had the insane urge to pop home and don her old school robes just to blend in more, instead of enduring the whispering, nudging, and staring they were accruing.

“Does it?” asked Luna dreamily.

“Yes,” said Ginny firmly, rolling her eyes.

“We could leave,” said Luna implacably. “And come back later for the Ceremony.”

October 31 had been declared by Kingsley Shacklebolt, the new Minister of Magic, as Heroes Day in honor of all those who fell in the two wars against Voldemort and his Death Eaters. The face of it, of course, was Harry Potter, and Harry had asked the day to coincide with Halloween, the night his parents were killed.

Victory Day was declared May 2 after the Battle of Hogwarts. But this October 31 was more somber, and many people had erected shrines to lost love ones in rememberance, and thousands of candles and wand tips were lit in solidarity at sunset. It was the first war memorial day since Voldemort’s downfall, and most people had forgotten the Halloween holiday in the wake of the sober affair.

But of course not all Hogwarts students had. Those that were older and who had lost people in the Battle were sitting in corners, walking or stopped on the side of the narrow cobbled streets talking low voices. They also gawked openly at Ginny and Luna. But the younger ones, especially the third and fourth years, were in full Halloween spirit  on one of the first Hogsmeade weekends of the year.

“Does it make you sad?” Luna asked, with a sort of mental leap that was not reflected in her observant blue eyes, her wandering focus.

“Of course it makes me sad,” snapped Ginny. “Look, over there.” She pointed. “That’s where Fred first let me taste firewhiskey. Outside the Hogs Head. I was fourteen.”

“That’s rather young,” said Luna, but without a thread of disapproval, only mild interest.

“And there,” Ginny pointed desperately. “You know when Harry was in the Triwizard Tournament? Bill came down, and Mum and Ron and Bill and I were all by ourselves. It was actually one of the best afternoons I’ve ever spent.” She glanced, couldn’t stop:

“And there. The post office. When Percy wouldn’t let me use Hermes, and Pig was too small.”

“And the Three Broomsticks,” said Luna, smiling at Ginny. “We used to go there. Together. As friends.”

Ginny blushed furiously, momentarily derailed from her spiraling grief.

“My first kiss was in the Three Broomsticks,” she said, her voice tight with embarrassment. “Michael Corner. In the booth. Stupid really. Just to annoy Ron, I think. Or make Harry jealous.”

“Well, you’re very pretty,” Luna said in a clinical sort of way, looking at Ginny’s face with wide, imperturbable eyes. “I’m sure Michael didn’t mind, either way.”

Whether she was trying to or not, this made Ginny laugh and feel better, and they pushed open the door to the Three Broomsticks amid a quiet hush. For a moment, Ginny wanted to run back out, but Luna was next to her, not caring, apparently, that she was wearing a garland of red maple in her long, dirty blonde hair, or had crocheted a chain of yarn into a strange sort of choker.

“It’s a Weasley,” beamed the proprietor, the barmaid Madame Rosmerta, bustling forward.

Ginny flushed as scarlet as her hair.

Luna leaned around her. “Table for two, if you have it.”

Ginny scanned the pub; it was jam packed. Even conjuring a table and chairs, there would be no where to put it admist the students and townfolk.

“Upstairs,” Madame Rosmerta said quickly, pointing at a wooden ladder set into the side of one wall that Ginny had always assumed was a set of shelves left strangely undecorated.

“Thank you,” said Luna simply and threaded her way through crowded tables, which had resumed talking, but had not stopped staring.

Luna led the way up the ladder that looked like a bookshelf. Ginny followed her, trying to force herself not to hurry any faster lest she actually cram her head between Luna’s patchwork covered leather boots. Luna had done the patches herself, out of an old Ravenclaw tie of hers.

The loft of the Three Broomsticks was evidently under some sort of concealment charm, because Ginny had never noticed it before. She was amazed to see several other people already at small tables, all of whom looked up at their entrance before waving or dropping their eyes back to their partners.

Ginny would have been pleased to see so much of the old crowd  for the Ceremony if she wasn’t so nervous and shaky from the ocassion and the anxiety of being near so many staring people. Harry was there too, which was awful, but at least Ron wasn’t with him. They nodded at each other, and she could tell his shoulders were set tensely.

“Hello Harry,” beamed Luna as she passed him.

Harry looked up. “Hello Luna,” he smiled at her, and the tension ebbed a little even as he and Ginny half smiled at one another at Luna’s obliviousness.

Harry was sitting with Draco Malfoy, who was trying very hard to look invisible, his shoulders hunched, and the back of his blonde head all crumpled from where his hair was cutting into his collar as he stared into his drink.

Luna was undettered. “Hello Draco,” she said cheerfully.

Draco Malfoy looked absolutely stunned. “Hi,” he managed. Ginny did not greet him, and he returned her coollness with some of his own haughtiness, ignoring her with a sort of perverse calm that was so at odds with the rest of his appearance.

Ginny had never liked Draco Malfoy. She could never quite forgive him for the insults that had so crushed her soul when she had been in love with Harry, even at age ten. Or the way he had always treated Harry, from cheating at quidditch to those stupid ‘Potter Stinks’ badges. Of course, the worst part of her entire life had been orchestrated by his father. And there was what he did to Hermione.

She didn’t know  _why_  Harry was even bothering. It had been one of their biggest fights in the ending of their relationship over the summer, only a year after the battle. Harry insisted Malfoy deserved a type of redemption. A little kindness.

Ginny had been apalled; Fred had  _died_  because of scum like him. George had lost an  _ear_ , and almost his life. And Harry had stood there and defended Snape –  _Snape_ – of all people. About how he had maimed her brother, and picked on Neville, whom she and Luna had always liked. And Lucius Malfoy had orchestrated the most thorough violation of Ginny’s mind and soul that could have been orchestrated of an eleven year old girl.

To see them here now, together, with Draco Malfoy slinking in his seat, told her that he not only knew he was instrumental in ending her and Harry’s relationship, but that he was mortified because she was, of course, right.

Ginny swept past the both of them without glancing at them, and chose her and Luna’s table as far from them as it was possible to get, under a window overlooking High Street. She unwound her scarf and settled angrily into the chair, snapping up the menu and reading it once through before Luna even bothered to drift over.

“I didn’t know they liked one another now,” said Luna happily, also taking off her scarf and settling into her chair.

“I don’t care,” said Ginny shortly.

“I do,” said Luna, obliviously. “I think it’s sweet.”

“ _Sweet?”_  Ginny thought she might explode. “Harry? With a git like that? With death eater scum who murdered my brother?” She did not even bother to keep her voice down, and several heads turned in their direction. To her annoyance, neither the black nor the blonde one did, though both of their postures had become rigid.

“I don’t know,” said Luna thoughtfully, as if she and Ginny were having a rational conversation, instead of Ginny vibrating so hard in her seat she thought she might have a better chance of levitating than if she had swallowed an entire crate of fizzing whisbees. “I never disliked him.”

“You  _never dis-“_  sputtered Ginny, but Luna interrupted her, which was both a very Luna thing to do, and also something Luna only rarely did, more often content to listen.

“He was a sad boy.”

Ginny couldn’t stand the stares, so she threw up the  _muffliato_  spell in a sphere around her and Luna, and waited until the interested glances slid away from her ferocious glower.

“A  _sad boy_ ,” she repeated seethingly. “A sad  _boy_? That idiot nearly murdered you.”

“He only kept me downstairs,” said Luna, as if she had been inconvenienced instead of imprisoned.

“ _Only kept you downstairs?_ ” Ginny had to force herself to modulate her tone.

“And he was very sorry he did it,” Luna said complacently, also scanning the menu. “He told me so.”

“What do you mean?” asked Ginny warily. It had been two years since Luna’s imprisonment. But they still hadn’t talked about it. Their last year of Hogwarts (and Ginny had honestly been astonished they hadn’t had to repeat the year, with Luna missing most of it in the Malfoy Manor basement, and Ginny missing most of it hiding in the Room of Requirement), they had mostly attempted to be as cheerful as possible. Repairs to the castle had been pulled of splendidly. There were small ropes cordoning off the places everyone had died in the Battle of Hogwarts. And even after N.E.W.Ts their friendship had deepened, especially after she had broken it off with Harry and needed a place to go. Moving back in with her Mum – depressed and sobbing nearly every day – and Dad, who tended to disappear every feasible waking moment into his workshed, had been too much to even consider.

She and Luna had become roommates, of a sorts. At first, Ginny had just crashed on Luna’s couch. And then she had tried to transfigure a bed, but hadn’t been able to do it properly. Hermione kept promising she would come by, but she was drowning in her new job at the Ministry, and Ginny was too embarrassed to ask her mum for help. Practicably, Luna had just invited her to sleep in her bed, which was plenty large enough for the both of them. It hadn’t even been that strange; they had shared a much smaller bed when Luna had spent the night at the Burrow the few times she had been over.

“He used to come and see me,” said Luna. “I think he came to see all of us, but he didn’t know what to do with Mr. Griphook and Mr. Ollivander. I think he was too embarrassed and too young. And you know, I was a bit younger, so I think it was easier to talk to me, overall.”

Ginny sometimes found Luna’s astuteness uncanny, as she showed almost little to no social awareness of her own interactions.

“He came to see you?”

“Oh yes,” said Luna, quietly, and Ginny felt her skin prickle with discomfort at the tone. Luna’s voice was rarely cold, or sharp, or unpleasant in any way. Now it was all three.

“And?”

“And he used to just whisper to me, in the darkness. After.”

“After?”

Luna was silent, looking out the window.

 _After she was tortured_ , Ginny realized with a sickening swoop to her stomach. She forced herself to speak.

“What did they want?”

“Want?” and Luna’s voice was the same brittleness.

“When they…questioned you?”

Luna stared at her, confused. “They didn’t want anything.”

Ginny swallowed, and looked down. The anger drained out of her. She looked at the menu again. Of course she didn’t need to. Every month here for five years and she knew it by heart, and knew what she wanted. Minced pie. Frothed butterbeer. And now, because she was of age, her mother’s disapproving tutting be damned, she would take a glass of scotch, just to take the edge off.

The Three Broomsticks wasn’t staffed with servers; it was order at the bar for drinks, and written orders for food. Ginny scribbled her order on the stack of torn pieces of scrap parchment left loose in a bowl with a small stub of charcoal before looking up at Luna.

“What do you want? I’ll write it here.”

“Minced pie, butterbeer for me too.”

“I’m getting a scotch.”

“Why?”

“Do you want one?” asked Ginny, ignoring the question.

“No.”

“Suit yourself.”

“It tastes bitter.”

“That’s sort of the point.”

Luna made a face that looked like she might be pondering the secrets of the universe and quintessentially failing to understand them.

Ginny gave a blustery sigh as she impaled the order slip on top of the others in the spike on the table. The words on it glowed red for a moment, and then it returned to normal. Ginny dropped her charcoal in the bowl, wiping her hands on her jeans.

She looked across the table at Luna, wearing her red maple crown, lit from the side by the window. She had to smile in spite of herself.

“What?”

“I think you’re quite pretty too,” said Ginny, rather shyly.

“I think so,” agreed Luna, but not with any vanity, just with a sort of clinical assurance.

Ginny laughed again, and Luna looked up. “What?” she asked, even as Ginny saw the tray floating high above the heads of everyone else.

“It’s nothing,” she said. “I’m going to scoot over, if that’s all right, so my back is to them.”

“Really, you’re being very prejudiced,” Luna said mildly as Ginny turned her chair so her back was to Harry and Draco Malfoy.

“Well, now I can talk to you and no one can see what we say,” Ginny said, smiling impishly.

“Why would people be staring?” asked Luna, as if she genuinely didn’t know.

Ginny only dropped her head with a ducked laugh, and came up grinning. She squinted as a maple leaf poked her in the eye.

“Oh good,” said Luna as the tray settled between them.

They were busy a moment taking everything off of it, and the tray resumed floating back down to the kitchens as they set up their dishes. Under the table, Luna’s knee was knocking Ginny’s knee, and she playfully bumped it to try to give her more room. Luna only stared at her, frowning a bit, and then threaded her ankle around Ginny’s.

“Is this what you want?” she asked.

Ginny laughed again. Luna’s humor was sometimes so subtle she wasn’t sure if she was being had or not. So Ginny always laughed regardless.

She left her leg tangled with Luna as they picked up their meat pies in their wrappers and bit into them, both making indentical expressions – as they had dozens of times – about how hot they were. Ginny began to relax in the hum of conversation, the familiar setting of the Three Broomsticks, the same food and company. Even being upstairs and being close to a window only added to her enjoyment. She could watch students milling about and meeting up with friends. Luna’s maple crown kept getting tangled in Ginny’s hair, and finally Ginny had to lift it off of her. Luna didn’t object as she drank from her mug of butterbeer.

“Do you think we’ll have to speak at the Ceremony?” Luna asked her some time later as they both nursed their mostly empty mugs of butterbeer in companionable silence.

“Merlin, I hope not,” Ginny said in horror. “I didn’t prepare anything.”

“That’s all right,” said Luna. “I was going to talk about the Twittering Vampire Shrike, but I suppose you could inform everyone about their diminishing ecosystem and I’ll talk about the appetizing smell of chicken feet to the Bubbadare.”

“Thanks,” said Ginny, partly amused, partly sincere. “But I don’t think we’ll have to speak. Just stand up in a line or something while Professor McGonagall makes a speech.”

“They’ve been constructing statues,” said Luna. “Of all the people who died on grounds during the Battle. On our side, of course,” she added thoughtfully. “They’re putting them behind the ropes, or I think in a few cases up against the walls if they died mid-corridor.”

Ginny felt her heart squeeze. George had been Fred’s model. It had wrecked him for weeks, though the sculptor had only needed him for an hour.

“Yeah?” she said lightly, but she turned her brown eyes to the scarred wooden table and wished Luna would stop talking.

“And Professor Sinistra asked Professor McGonagall if I could come and paint a mural,” Luna said happily.

This time, Ginny did pay attention. “Really?” she asked. “That’s wonderful, Luna. I’m sure you’ll do an amazing job!”

“It’s already finished.”

“It is?”

Luna nodded. “I finished it in August. Before the school opened.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“You seemed so upset whenever we talked about the repairs before.”

“I was. I am. I don’t know.” Ginny squeezed Luna’s arm reassuringly to let her know she wasn’t angry. “What’s your mural of?”

“I did it of Neville,” beamed Luna. “Slaying the last horcrux.”

“Oh, Luna, that’s  _wonderful_!” beamed Ginny. “Really, really wonderful.”

“Yes; he wasn’t a casualty, of course, so he didn’t get a statue. And I didn’t want people forgetting.”

“Where’s the mural?”

“Out in the clocktower courtyard, where Neville killed the snake. I had to use special paint, and Professor Flitwick enchanted it so it won’t fade with the rain.”

“I can’t wait to see it,” beamed Ginny, suddenly feeling cheerful, instead of dreading stepping foot in the castle to see her brother’s statue in the spot where he had died.

Luna took up her maple leaf crown from the table and put it on Ginny’s head.

“What’s this for?” Ginny laughed.

Luna smiled. “You looked so pretty, just in that moment, I wanted to give you a crown.”

Ginny blushed under Luna’s gaze, and her eyes darted to Luna’s earrings. They were made of folded paper birds. Luna had obviously made them herself, out of Droobles wrappers.

“You’re very enchanting, you know,” continued Luna serenely. “Like a nymph. And wearing the red leaves and your red hair, you look like a spirit of autumn.”

“Stop,” said Ginny fondly, but still deeply embarrassed. She moved her eyes on Luna’s face again, avoiding the blue ones. They settled on Luna’s jaw, which was soft and had feathered white fuzz lit in the light of the window, making her glow in her own halo.

“Do you remember, when Harry asked me to go to Slughorn’s party? As friends?”

At the sound of Harry’s name, Ginny’s eyes flashed to Luna’s and she frowned. “Why?” she asked, annoyed Luna would bring that up and ruin the afternoon again.

“I was happy Harry asked me to go as friends,” said Luna warmly. “Because I was happy to have a friend.”

“I know.”

“But I was also glad Harry didn’t ask me  _not_  as friends.”

Ginny grinned a half grin, but quickly stopped. She had picked that up from Fred, and it was too painful to wear. “Yes, well, if it was on my behalf-“ she began.

“Yes, it was,” said Luna quickly.

“Oh.”

Ginny didn’t know what to say. Luna was confessing her love for Harry only a few tables away from him. To his ex-girlfriend. It was so embarrassingly awkward, Ginny was only marginally surprised Luna hadn’t even noticed.

“Yes,” said Luna, and now her body was relaxing its tight rigidity. She leaned forwards eagerly. “Is that okay?”

“Okay?” echoed Ginny. Her mind should have been racing but it felt like it was stuck in a bog. Luna was asking if it was  _okay_  to date Harry? Ginny wasn’t even sure that Harry would go for Luna. She was actually sure he wouldn’t, and she was starting to get angry at him all over again, and nothing had even happened.

“Yes. Is this okay?”

“Is it okay?” Ginny wished she would stop just saying what Luna was saying. It sounded insane. And Luna was pressing her leg hard into Ginny’s, and Ginny wanted to yank hers away out of anger and humiliation at Luna’s  _audacity_ to ask her if she was all right with this when she definitely wasn’t.

“Because I’ve known for a long time,” Luna continued blithely unaware of Ginny’s mounting color and temper. “And I mean, I think I’ve always known, you know, but I realized sometime after you moved in for  _sure_.”

“Mmm,” said Ginny, putting an elbow on the table so she could cover her mouth without seeming obvious about it. As she leaned hard onto the wood grain, she felt the yarn of her Mum’s knit sweater cutting into her. She felt like screaming. Or maybe crying. And she didn’t know why Luna was so damn happy and relieved.

Yes she did. She understood. Luna had been nervous about asking Ginny because Ginny had a notorious temper, almost as bad as Harry’s. Ginny felt ashamed, and she looked up, taking her chin out of her hand.

“Luna.”

Luna stopped talking at once, her blue eyes round and expectant.

“I…” Ginny forced herself to stay calm. To meet those eyes. But she couldn’t bring herself to smile. Not while sitting with her best friend in the place  _they_  had shared. Not over  _their_ favorite meal. Not while their legs were tangled. Not while Luna was using both her hands to hold Ginny’s limp one on the tabletop. “It’s…it’s okay with me,” she said finally. “I understand. Really.”

“Really?” Luna was all smiles, her hair backlit by the sunlight. She looked absurdly beautiful in that moment, and Ginny hated her for it. Hated her for looking lovely and kind and soft when she was so callously and obliviously breaking Ginny’s heart with her own two hands.

“Really,” she said, finally breaking the eye contact to look down at the table. She lightly tugged her hand from Luna’s. “I mean, I know I was in love with Harry for half my life.”

“What?”

“Ever since I first heard who he was,” Ginny continued, pulling her hands together in her lap, hyper-aware of Harry feet away. Hyper aware of the prickle in the air around her of the  _muffliato_ spell and intensely grateful for it. This was aboslutely humiliating.

She wanted to go home.

“What are you talking about?” Luna asked in bewilderment.

“What do you mean?” Ginny frowned. “You said…” she was trying to work through it even as she spoke. “You said…you were glad Harry didn’t ask you out.”

“Yes.”

“And it was because of me.”

“ _Yes_ ,” said Luna more emphatically.

“Because you didn’t want to hurt my feelings.”

Luna squinted, tipping her head as she considered. “I don’t know if I’d call it  _that_ ,” she said, frowning. “I think it was more just that I wasn’t sure if I was in love with you then. I had only really discovered that there was a word for liking everybody equally.”

Several small explosions were occurring behind Ginny’s blank brown eyes, her open mouth. First of all, Luna was – but  _no_  that would be crazy. But Luna being queer, being pan, she could understand. Ginny was passably familiar with the terms herself, when she was thinking she might be bisexual. Something about Fleur had always really bothered her, and it wasn’t until Tonks pointed out that she was fucking gorgeous that Ginny clicked it as sexual attraction. The mortification of being fourteen and into your eldest brother’s girlfriend had forced her to throw herself into cleaning the Black Manse speechlessly for days.

Tonks had found this all disproportionately hilarious.

“I was probably about your age too,” Tonks had told her cheerfully. “I keep my hair in the color spectrum just for that: pink, purple, blue, just in case I find someone who strikes my fancy. A signal, you know,” she winked.

Ginny did  _not_  know.

Ginny wasn’t even sure, now that she was nineteen, if any of this was true about herself. But it being true about Luna made a lot of sense. Luna had never really cared about the physical world. She really only cared about the ideas of things. The concepts. Liking people for their souls was such a very  _Luna_  concept.

“Er,” said Ginny brilliantly. “What?”

“What do you mean, what?” Luna said, rather testily. “I love you.”

“Yes, well, of course,” Ginny mumbled, still not quite listening as she tried to wrap her head around even the conversation about Harry she had just had with Luna.

“Really?” and Luna brightened up, though Ginny was botching this spectacularly.

Ginny looked suspiciously at the table. “Wait…was this…a date?”

“Of course,” said Luna imperturbably. “They always were.”

“They  _what?”_  Ginny yelped.

“Every time we came, I thought it was a date. You moved in with me! We live together.”

“We’re  _dating?”_  Ginny yelled. “But…but when we were in school…I-I loved Harry!”

“Yes, that did depress me for quite a while,” Luna admitted. “And I was so happy when you were fighting, but I felt it would be awkward to say so.”

“Awkward to say so?” Ginny echoed faintly. “I wish you had!”

“So…we aren’t dating?” Luna’s face was a meteor, drawn into the collapsing gravity of Ginny’s earth shattering realizations.

“If we are, I didn’t know about it!”

“And you don’t…don’t like me?” Luna quavered. Her face was crashing.

“I mean, I like you,” Ginny said impatiently.

“But not…”

“Don’t’ say it,” Ginny said hastily. She didn’t know if she could  _imagine_  sex with Luna right now.  

“But…we share a bed,” Luna said simply.

“As friends! And…and you’ve never…you know…made a move,” Ginny fumbled awkwardly.

“I wanted to wait until you were ready,” said Luna steadily. But Ginny could tell her world was on fire.

“Th-thank you,” stuttered Ginny. She put her hands to her head and found the maple crown at her temples. She yanked it off to run her fingers across her scalp, and she saw Luna’s face fall. The meteor had reached impact.

“Luna, I…I need some time…to…think about all of this,” Ginny said, still holding her hair back from her face with one hand. She used her wand to thread it through a bun to hold it up.

“I’ll leave you alone,” said Luna. When she stood, Ginny could see she curved forward, like Ginny had carved a crater in her surface.

“No!” said Ginny quickly. “No. Just…let’s both leave. I need to…to walk.”

“Okay,” said Luna miserably.

They both dressed in silence. Luna did not put her red maple crown back on, and only took it in one hand. That small action alone broke Ginny’s heart as they made their way carefully not looking at a concerned Harry and smirking Malfoy and carefully climbed the built in ladder to the pub.

It was still wildly crowded, but Ginny’s ears were stuffed with thoughts, wispy and snarled and confusing, like fairy floss. She wished she could take a shower, maybe melt it away. Hot showers always helped her think. Now though, she walked side by side with a speechless, concerned Luna, who kept darting glances her direction.

Luna’s feet chose the path, and they made their way by instinct to the Shrieking Shack. It had been a favorite haunt of theirs, after Ginny had let Luna in on the secret of Remus Lupin.

“He was a good professor,” Luna had protested, staring at the small shack. “I never minded he was a werewolf.”

“You wouldn’t have minded if he was a banshee,” Ginny had retorted, and they had walked back debating whether banshees counted as people or not.

Now when they came down the winding forest path to the end of the road, Ginny’s heart squeezed painfully. No one was in the clearing, partially because it was slightly cold, and partially because it was a bit of a walk for a haunted attraction. But it was no longer haunted.

In the center of the clearing, a large statue of Professor R.J. Lupin had been erected. At the base, it had his dates of birth and death, and also the dates at which he had taught at Hogwarts as Defense Against the Dark Arts professor. His stone robes were very shabby, even in art, which Ginny thought rather unfair. And he still had the same wan expression and deepset eyes, even without the coloration. At his feet was a battered suitcase with his name on it, and on the other side was a tank with a grinylow etched into it. There was also a plaque by the wooden fence looking over the field to the shack.

Ginny couldn’t bring herself to read it.

Luna also seemed to have forgotten, for a moment, that they had been silent. “It gives information about the Werewolf Registry,” she said quietly. “And how it affected people’s ability to work. And the prejudices that drove Professor Lupin away.”

“That’s good,” Ginny said, and she could hear that her own voice was choked and terrible. “That’s really good.”

“This will be here for when his son is old enough to come here,” said Luna, staring at the statue, oblivious to the painful profundity of her words.

Ginny stared at it, unseeing. How old would her own children be before they saw their then long-dead Uncle Fred in the corridor where his brains had been smashed out of him?

Ginny knew she was crying; could feel the hot tears streaming silently down her face. Next to her, Luna linked her fingers artlessly through her own and squeezed. It was an invitation, and the swamping grief and terror and sadness that was drowning Ginny was louder than any confusion.

She turned into Luna’s shoulder with a sob and felt Luna’s arms go around her. Ginny returned the gesture.

“When I lost my mother,” said Luna, very quietly. Her voice was so quiet, Ginny almost hadn’t heard it over the sound of her own sobbing. She quieted immediately to catch every word. Luna rarely talked about her mother.

“I thought that if I made enough pictures of her, or kept enough pictures of her, that I could trap her soul here. Keep her with me to talk to me, like the paintings here do.”

“Oh Luna,” said Ginny quietly. Magical portraiture was at best an echo.

“I studied painting for years,” Luna said into the air over Ginny’s shoulder, her chin vibrating with her voice against Ginny’s collarbone. “Trying to be good enough to paint her. I finally tried in my second year.”

“And?” Ginny pulled back a little, wiping at her eyes.

“It was horrible,” said Luna flatly. “More horrible than anything that went on in the Malfoy’s basement.”

“Why?”

“Because it looked like her. But  _not enough_. And it sounded like her, but it didn’t  _speak_  like her. I didn’t remember how my mother sounded when she spoke to my father. Only her voice when she was reading, or teaching me. And it became so awful, so horrible to hear her saying ‘Little moon, what’s wrong?’ in  _her voice,_ I ended up burning the painting in a week. I never told Daddy what I’d done.”

This time, Ginny linked hands with Luna, and Luna smiled greyly at her.

“Did you really never guess?” she asked quietly.

“I think I was so busy being in love with someone else, I never noticed someone was in love with me,” said Ginny after a moment.

“Yes, just think, and someone might be in love with me,” teased Luna. “And the chain could go on forever.”

Ginny looked over at Luna. “You’re my best friend,” she told her seriously.

“I know,” said Luna simply.

“I’m afraid,” said Ginny.

“I know.”

“What if we ruin it?”

“How could we?”

“What if we break up? I thought I was in love with Harry for seven years.”

“You  _were_  in love with Harry for seven years.”

“Then why did we break up?” Ginny argued belligerently.

“Do you think everyone who is in love stays together always?” Luna asked, with a hint of a smile tugging at her lips. She was looking at Ginny fondly, but as if she were a child.

Ginny was defensive. “I don’t know. Yes. I guess.”

“Sometimes the greatest tragedy comes from the greatest love. Isn’t that the price of love? Grief?”

“Deep,” said Ginny scathingly.

“And I know that every day I would rather love you, even if it brings me as much agony as losing my mum did.”

Ginny didn’t know why she did it. It didn’t make any sense. But she threw her arms around Luna and squeezed, her face in Luna’s hair, which smelled like freesia. Luna squeezed back.

“I love you,” Ginny mumbled into Luna’s hair. She knew her breath would tickle the back of her neck. “But I didn’t realize we were in a relationship, much less if I’m  _in_  love with you.”

Luna untangled them patiently and pulled away, but only a few inches.

Ginny felt her pulse pick up quite quickly; just as fast as it ever had with the boys she had dated. Well, that answered that question then.

She smiled nervously at Luna and shivered as the wind suddenly blew down the back of her neck, her scarf loose around her shoulders in her excitement. “I don’t want to lose you,” she said in an almost whisper. “I can’t lose anyone again. I just  _can’t_.”

“I understand,” said Luna, and in that moment sheer  _understanding_  was a type of kindness and overwhelming swamping love that Ginny needed more than all the romance in the world. She tipped her head a few inches to rest on Luna’s forehead. They stared at each other’s eyes, almost cross-eyed with their closeness.

“I think…” Ginny whispered, filtering through her heart. “I could be in love with you. Really easily, actually. And that’s…scary.”

“I know.”

Ginny grinned mischeviously. “Oh, you know do you?”

But Luna didn’t smile, only let her eyes dart from freckle to freckle across Ginny’s face near her bottom eyelashes. “I know you,” she said simply. “I know your face. And I know your moods. And I know your thoughts. And, I think, if you let me, I could know your heart.”

“Luna,” Ginny blushed crimson. “You can’t  _say_  things like that.”

Luna did not move away. She tilted her nose even closer to Ginny’s. “Why not?”

“Because they’re corny and embarrassing,” Ginny mumbled, her eyes shut with the embarrsassment of it. Or so she told herself.

“Good,” said Luna quietly. “You don’t let yourself hear good things enough.”

“That’s not true,” Ginny said, opening her mouth in preparation. She was sucking in Luna’s breath as soon as it left her teeth.

Luna smiled, and Ginny, with her eyes closed, could  _feel_ it. Feel it in the way Luna’s nose crinkled, the way the soft apples of her cheeks touched her own, and felt her tilt the last fraction of an inch, and their lips touched.

It was slow and savory and very unlike kissing anyone – any  _boy_ , Ginny reminded herself – she had ever kissed before. Ginny opened her eyes and saw Luna was already and predictably staring at her. Gaging her reaction.

Ginny didn’t think she could stand still, there were so many butterflies in her stomach. “Er,” she said brilliantly.

And then Luna laughed.

They walked hand in hand back up to Hogsmeade, and then all the way to the castle.


End file.
